


My Soul to Keep

by ExpectoPatronum



Series: When the Wind Blows [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Sleepy Cuddles, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-07 17:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14676452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpectoPatronum/pseuds/ExpectoPatronum
Summary: When he blinked, Peter could still see it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Major Infinity War spoilers ahead!

When he blinked, Peter could still see it.

The Soul World had been a wash of orange light which seemed to radiate from no particular source. It was its own sun, and although its other inhabitants had not seemed troubled by the eerie atmosphere, Peter's stomach turned at the memory of it.

Wrong. It had felt so wrong.

He blinked again and shuddered violently.

The hand that had been gripping his shoulder with only enough pressure to steer him along now squeezed reassuringly. Tony's hand. 

There were subtle changes in his surroundings, which he surmised had to do with the frankly mind-bending amount of time-altering it had taken to reverse the damage done by the snap of Thanos's fingers. Doctor Strange had referred to it as a course correction -- though this was only after convincing Quill to stop referring to it as 'Earth 2: Electric Boogaloo' or Rocket's contribution of 'Fuck it, I want a redo!' -- and the others had adopted the term easily enough. 

Peter, however, was having some trouble with the finer points.

The others were already at the Compound, Tony had told him. The souls of the unlucky half of the universe had reappeared at the same locations they had been in at the moment they disappeared. Peter would have preferred to have skipped the long return journey home from Titan, but he  _had_ at least been grateful that the audience present for his reunion with Tony had been relatively small. He had clung to his mentor like a child, and Tony had stayed within arm's reach of him ever since.

Ahead of them, the door slid open to reveal what Tony referred to as the Screening Room. Even for Tony Stark, it was almost embarrassingly lavish; the far wall was dominated by a cinema-sized movie screen, complete with decorative curtains to either side. The floor was littered with overstuffed leather sofas, armchairs and lounges -- there was even a hammock hung from the ceiling in a far corner -- and an antique popcorn cart stood unused beside a state-of-the-art soda fountain.

There was room enough for fifty people to sit comfortably.

Predictably, the team had chosen to crowd together on a single sofa.

"Daddy's home!" Tony announced, steering Peter in alongside him and frowning slightly at the red and gold figure blasting its way across the movie screen, "And what are we watching?"

" _Jingle All the Way_ ," murmured Clint, his words slightly muffled by the pillow he had draped across Natasha's lap before sprawling across it.

"Bruce says watching movies with mindlessly cheery subject matter is the quickest way to distract yourself from a recent trauma," Natasha elaborated without opening her eyes.

Tony's gaze drifted to Bruce, against whose shoulder Natasha's head was nestled, and whom appeared unrepentant. 

"This is a Christmas movie. We're not watching Christmas movies in the middle of summer. Cap, back me up here," Tony beseeched, turning to the far end of the sofa where Steve and Bucky had crammed together, their legs carelessly tangled on a single ottoman.

"Not sure Christmas in July is the greatest affront the chronology of the universe has seen today, Tony," was Steve's sleepy reply, to which Thor had the audacity to  _giggle_.

Peter swayed slightly on his feet, and Tony's retort was cut short. 

"Fine.  _F_ _ine_. C'mere, kid," Tony sighed, nudging Peter toward the near end of the sofa and pushing in beside Thor, who in turn pressed in closer to Bruce to make room.

Peter hovered uncertainly for a moment; they all looked so blissfully at ease with one another, as though this sort of scene had happened countless times before. Even the Winter Soldier, whom Peter had never seen without a furrow of suspicion between his eyes, appeared perfectly content with Steve's arm around his shoulders and Clint's legs across his lap.

The prospect of being included in this kind of comeraderie and friendship was more than he had ever hoped for -- but each time he blinked, he was back in the Soul World with the taste of dust in his mouth and the clawing panic that had made his knees buckle and his head swim. When the others had been saving the world, he had been useless and terrified. Even the ones that had appeared in the other world along with Peter had been desperate only to rejoin the fray.

They were heroes, all of them. Peter had simply been a stowaway. He had no right to be here.

"Kid? You're dead on your feet. Take a load off," Tony prompted, indicating the space beside him.

When he could not delay it any longer, Peter lowered himself gingerly and perched on the end of the sofa, perhaps not touching but still just a hair closer to Tony than he felt he deserved to be; the allure of warmth and safety was too much even for his shame to overcome. A beat passed, and then:

"Yeah, sorry kid, this isn't working for me --" Tony began, and Peter leapt to his feet as though scalded, utterly mortified.

"Sorry! Yeah, sorry, I should, um -- I should be going, anyway --" he sputtered, turning desperately for the door even as Tony's hand seized the back of his shirt and tugged him back down. He landed with a muffled  _flump_ much closer to Tony than he had originally been seated.

"Not what I meant, Underoos," Tony continued, and the nickname sounded undeniably affectionate. Peter felt Tony's arm wrap around his shoulders, pulling him in close, and then a nudge from beneath the furniture as an additional section of the sofa rose up beneath Peter's legs until he was reclining, momentarily stunned.

"That distance -- not working for me. Enforced cuddling. Consider this your punishment for scaring the hell out of me, you little shitbird. Everyone on the team has gotten it at some point. Bruce had to sit through an entire Breaking Bad marathon with me when he Hulked out in the old lab," Tony chuckled, apparently cheered by the memory.

"I haven't gotten it," Natasha mused from Bruce's shoulder, an insolent smile belying the hurt tone.

"There's only room for one spider in this heart, Romanoff. And Peter's less likely to tear off my head and lay his eggs in my neck," Tony shot back lazily. 

Peter's laugh was a tinge more hysterical sounding than he would have liked, but it was the first time he'd really laughed since he'd returned, and Tony gave his shoulders an encouraging squeeze. 

All at once, he was exhausted.

The movie continued to play in the background as Arnold Schwarzenegger's character searched desperately for Turbo Man, and Peter felt the weight of his insecurities and lingering fear begin to pale in comparison to the protective strength of Iron Man's arm around him. Gradually, he allowed himself to relax into the embrace, following suit with the others and huddling in closer to the warm weight beside him.

There was no quick fix to this, he knew. There would be nightmares and memories and whole new battles to contend with in the wake of this war. The orange glow of that other place would still be there behind his eyes tomorrow. But as he nuzzled into the comforting dark of Tony's shoulder and felt the steady thrum of his pulse against his ear -- here and now, with his team's gentle sleep sounds all around him -- he was safe. 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony does not sleep.

Tony did not sleep.  
  
Whatever Peter had presumed by the casualness with which the team had crowded into each other's personal space, it had been a long time since they'd all been together like this. It was something like pressing on an old bruise; Tony could still feel a twinge of hurt beneath the healing.   
  
Steve had said it best in the letter he'd sent along with the antiquated phone: ' _We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine_.' The super-soldier had probably meant it as a peace offering, but at the time, it had felt as if he'd pressed his finger against an open wound.  
  
Since that first post-battle shawarma run, Tony had been carefully constructing the framework for a life with these people -- his people. He had meticulously designed sleeping quarters for each member of the team in the tower, orchestrated dozens of opportunities to bring them all together for increasingly ridiculous reasons ("Monopoly night?  _Really_ , Tony?" Steve had laughed on one such occasion) and resorted to heavy-artillery bribery until they had seemed to understand the message he was unable to put into words: _stay with me._  
  
And one by one, they had. Bruce had begun to tinker alongside Tony in his workshop. Natasha added Tchaikovsky to the Tower's ambient music playlist. Clint -- though he never stayed for more than a few days at a time -- made a point of leaving his shoes lying around for the others to trip over. Thor strolled directly out of his morning shower and into the kitchen without so much as a towel. Steve filled the empty frames Tony had left on his nightstand with old photographs from his previous life. And some nights it was as though each of their separate demons had come alive at once, and the group would find themselves inexorably drawn to one another, unable to sleep without the comfort of knowing that they would not be alone in the dark.  
  
When Tony had replaced the 'Stark' emblem on the tower with the stylized 'A' of the Avengers, it had felt like a victory cry to the rest of the planet:  _I am a part of something_.   
  
That was what he had lost in the rift. The feeling of belonging had vanished with the rest of them. In his grief, Tony had leaned heavily on Pepper and struggled with conflicting desires both to take Peter Parker under his wing and to protect the kid from the destructive effect Tony seemed to have on the lives of everyone he cared about. He had sold the tower to Oscorps and fled to the compound to escape the feeling that he was living within the bones of his broken family. Had he not been so desperate to chase away old memories, he might have caught on to Toomes' plan before Peter had been forced to intervene.   
  
Still -- whatever lingering hurt and unease remained among them after the Accords, it had been overshadowed by the overwhelming grief they had all been faced with in the wake of Thanos. None of them had emerged unscathed.  
  
Instinctively, Tony glanced down at the kid at his side.  
  
Whatever reservations the conscious Peter had been harboring when it came to sharing space with the rest of them, his subconscious clearly knew better; the teenager had curled into Tony's side and nestled his head into the soft spot between Tony's shoulder and collarbone, one hand fisted loosely in the soft cotton of the man's shirt.   
  
Even as he watched the slow rise and fall of Peter's back, the same unbearable guilt rose up in Tony's chest unbidden. This kid had been content to sling his way around Queens catching shoplifters and stopping traffic for duckling crossings before Tony had recruited him. He should have been taking his PSATs and worrying about whether his college applications included enough extracurricular activities, not beating himself up for being _afraid to die_.  
  
That had been what was behind his reluctance to accept comfort, Tony was sure. Well -- that and the ever-present aura of insecurity that Peter could never seem to hide.  
  
It was almost laughable the way Tony and Peter were two sides of the same coin; where Tony's external self-confidence could easily be read as arrogance, he was privately consumed with doubt over the calibration of his own moral compass. His inability to trust himself to make the right decisions had been the driving force behind his support of the Accords.   
  
Peter, however -- Peter was unlike anyone Tony had ever met. The kid seemed constantly to feel as though he was bound to fall short of the world's expectations of him; he had marked himself as unworthy to the task, only to try anyway. Because it was the right thing to do. That kind of courage was its own superpower.  
  
It was what Tony had seen when he'd first started surveilling to discover the person behind YouTube sensation. He'd expected a Steve Rogers-esque super-soldier, not the skinny, tousle-haired kid who walked to school with his head bowed and an anxious fidget in his hands as he re-tied his shoelaces. But the kid's insecurities seemed to vanish each time he donned his home-made-art-class-nightmare of a costume; if the Spider-Boy outfit was a coping mechanism, it was a good one. And Tony knew better than anyone that there were uglier masks to hide behind.  
  
 Without really meaning to, he had let his fingers thread their way idly through Peter's still damp curls. He'd all but forced the boy into a shower and change of clothes the moment they'd arrived at the compound -- he'd rattled off a one-liner about living up to his school's Captain America Hygiene PSA, but in reality, he'd been unable to stomach the lingering scent of ozone and the faint traces of ash that gave the kid's skin a ghostly pallor. Peter had emerged with skin that was reassuringly flushed pink, whether from the hot water or the fact that the only pajamas he'd been left with consisted of an oversized (if comfortable) pair of sweatpants and a loosely fitting t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase ' **Talk Nerdy To Me.** '  
  
Tony always seemed to underestimate how small the kid was.   
  
A slight shiver ran through Peter's body and resonated in Tony's ribcage. Before he could react, someone was tossing a blanket in his direction and Tony caught it without thinking, glancing up to meet the gaze of Captain America. It seemed Tony hadn't been the only one unable to sleep.  
  
Tony glanced away before the understanding in Steve's eyes could further provoke the turmoil of emotion in his chest that he was too tired to examine. Instead, he nodded vaguely in thanks and settled the blanket across Peter's shoulders with forced indifference, as though his throat didn't tighten when he felt the kid snuggle closer to Tony's warmth, murmuring a sleepy, "Th'nks, M'ster Stark."  
  
Momentarily forgetting that he was being watched, Tony smoothed the blanket down Peter's back, letting the gentle motion of his hand carry on a bit longer as the kid's breaths evened back out into sleep and the soul-deep ache of  _compassiongriefloveterrorprotectiveguiltfamily_  ebbed.  
  
"He's a good kid, Tony."  
  
Tony met Steve's eyes as a flash of resentment filtered through the Berlin Wall of emotional repression he had thought was impenetrable, but he said only, "I know he is."  
  
This time, Steve looked away. His gaze shifted to Barnes, still asleep at his side. When he spoke again, his voice sounded almost tentative.  
  
"Buck told me -- while they were -- well, wherever they were -- they were together. Buck, and Sam, and Clint and -- and Peter. They looked out for each other." He paused, considering. "They were never alone."  
  
Tony hadn't known that. Strange had been frustratingly vague about their time in the other world, and Peter's face had flushed with what Tony had a sneaking suspicion was shame any time the subject had arisen in his presence. He suspected someone who wasn't currently captaining his own S.S. Self-Loathing ship would have known how to better handle the kid's misdirected blame -- instead, Tony had begun to feel sickeningly as though he had invited the teenager on board and raised the sails himself.  
  
_'I just wanted to be like you,' the boy on the roof had said, retreating in the face of Tony's disappointment._  
  
_'And I wanted you to be_  better.'  
  
"He thinks he let me down," Tony whispered to the dark room, still unable to meet Steve's eyes. "He fucking  _apologized_  right before he--" the words stuck in his throat. He blinked hard, wishing desperately that he could hide once more beneath the biting wit and humor that had been his armor long before Iron Man had existed. But nothing about this was funny. " _Jesus_ , Steve, I'm not cut out for this."  
  
"He needs you," Steve said simply, and there it was again: the rush of protective  _something_ in his veins like a hit of adrenaline followed by a chaser of primal terror. He had allowed this kid to get too close, _much_ too close. He was too far gone; to push Peter away now would only validate the teen's belief that he was unworthy. And while Tony might once have believed that an emotionally damaged kid was preferable to a  _dead_  one, recent events had taught him that the two were not mutually exclusive.  
  
_'I don't wanna go. Sir please,_ please _! I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go_ \--'  
  
Tony had witnessed the moment Peter's pleas for Tony to save him had changed to a broken plea for forgiveness. It had happened the instant Peter looked into Tony's eyes.   
  
What had he seen there?  
  
"He deserves better."  
  
Steve said nothing, but his gaze drifted back to where Barnes was still sound asleep beside him, his metal arm reflecting the light of the movie screen which had changed to its default screensaver of a live view of the night sky. The starlight seemed oddly at home on the cold metal surface of Bucky's still lethal limb, now relaxed in sleep.  
  
"Nobody gets what they deserve."  


* * *

  
  
Tony hadn't realized he'd drifted off until he felt a cold spot on his shoulder and opened his eyes to find that Peter had sat up and slid to the edge of the sectional where he now sat, gripping his own knees with white knuckles, his eyes fixed on the artificial stars on the screen.  
  
He straightened, gently dislodging from Thor to edge closer to Peter. He hadn't thought the boy had even registered his presence until he spoke.  
  
"I'm sorry," Peter whispered, and it was though they were back on Titan, broken and crumbling and so far from home.  
  
" _Don't_ \--" Tony began, feeling something hard and icy drop into his gut, but Peter's next words came out in a desperate flood.  
  
"Please let me-- just -- I didn't get to tell you before. And I -- but I -- God, I'm _so_ _sorry_. I let you down. I let everyone down. I couldn't get the fucking gauntlet off him, and then I just -- fell apart like a child while everyone else--" his voice broke, and Tony had to force himself not to interrupt while Peter composed himself enough to continue, "Everyone else kept it together, and I didn't. You were r-right about me, Mister Stark. I wasn't ready. I can't -- I shouldn't be Spider-Man."  
  
Peter didn't even wait for a reply. He swiped at his eyes with the backs of his knuckles and leaned forward until his head was almost between his knees, gripping fistfuls of his own hair. His back quaked with the force of his breaths, and Tony was all too familiar with the early signs of an anxiety attack. The teenager was shaking so violently that Tony was reminded of a rabbit, trapped in the moment an instant before panic and instinct would carry it away, a heartbeat from flight. He slid closer cautiously. He could not let Peter run.  
  
Tony laid his palm against the nape of Peter's neck and tried not to feel hurt by the way the kid flinched at the touch as though expecting a blow.  
  
"Deep breaths, Pete," he murmured, not yet trusting himself to say anything more.  
  
_'When you can do what I can, but you don't -- and_ then _the bad things happen -- they happen because of you_.'  
  
Steve had been right: Peter needed Tony. And Tony had the power to help him.   
  
Repressing his first instinct to withdraw his hand from Peter after he'd flinched, Tony slid in closer. He eased the boy upright against the back of the sofa and ignored the way Peter's gaze remained firmly on his knees, his eyes red-rimmed.  
  
"My turn to talk, now. No interruptions-- I let you get it out of your system, but kid -- I've listened to you talk for ages about whether Han shot first, and how emoticons are the alphabet of the future, and more than I ever wanted to know about the state of high school urinals -- but what you just said? _That_ is the first _stupid_ thing I've ever heard you say."  
  
Peter's head snapped up and at last he met Tony's eyes. Tony forced himself to be bolstered by the spark of anger he saw there and to ignore the flash of hurt that was behind it. He took the opportunity to move his palm to the side of Peter's head to prevent him from looking away.  
  
"You didn't let anyone down, Pete. You left a school trip and hitched a ride on a _spaceship_ to try to save the world. Because that's what you do. You help people."  
  
Peter looked as though he meant to argue this point, but Tony beat him to the punch.  
  
"You helped _me_." Tony hadn't intended for his voice to sound suddenly hoarse, but he hurried onward. "If I hadn't watched you--" his voice choked off completely, and he made a desperate grab for Peter's shoulders. The boy's arms raised automatically to grasp Tony's biceps, and they held each other steady, "--hadn't seen it happen -- I would have done _anything_ to fix that, kid. There is no law of the universe I won't break to keep from ever seeing that again."

His eyes were wet and his hands shook traitorously, but Peter didn't mention it; his eyes were fixed on his mentor's as Tony continued, "All of us here now, everyone alive and well -- that doesn't happen without Peter Parker fare-hopping his way to an alien planet to protect his friends. We won because you were there. There is no one in this galaxy or the next who I'd rather have on my team."  
  
Tony felt Peter's shoulders sag slightly as though relieved of a heavy burden, and saw the teenager tip suddenly forward, his forehead knocking almost painfully into the engineer's sternum. There was no hesitation this time when Peter's arms wrapped around his midsection; Tony pulled him in close and cupped a hand to the back of his head, bending to press dry lips against the mess of curls and finding the words more easily now, "You're not going anywhere, Spidey. We love you, kid."

Peter let out a shuddering sigh against his throat, and Tony lifted a hand to rub soothingly down his spine.

And then, when the moment felt too heavy, "Except Nat. You kind of stole her thunder with the whole spider thing. Russian intellectual property lawyers are your third biggest threat after computer spyware and your hot aunt's cooking."  
  
Peter giggled wetly into Tony's chest, and Tony scratched his fingers playfully along the kid's ribs just to hear the sound go on a little longer. Peter batted his hand away with a snort, shuffling away a few inches to escape the tickling only to shriek when Tony goosed him under the arms.  
  
Bucky woke with a start, setting off a chain reaction which left only Thor still asleep, drooling obliviously on Bruce's shirt sleeve.  
  
"G'backt'sleep," Clint ordered fuzzily to no one in particular, burying his face further into Natasha's stomach, "Leavey'rsisteralone."  
  
Tony actually guffawed at the horror on Peter's face at having been mistaken for Clint's young daughter, and his laughter did not subside until Bruce reached over Thor's head to flick him in the ear.  
  
"Ignore him, kid. When Pepper tickles him he makes a noise like a deflating balloon," Steve chuckled drowsily.  
  
"Steve wets his pants," was Barnes' unexpected contribution.  
  
"That was _ninety years ago_ , and _one time_ \--" Steve sputtered, suddenly wide awake, but Peter was grinning.  
  
" _Sleep_." Natasha commanded, hiding her smile in Steve's shoulder, and the group subsided, settling back into one another.  
  
This time, Peter cuddled into Tony's side without needing an invitation, curling his knees under him in a position that looked more cozy than despairing, and slinging an arm across the man's ribs while he nestled his head trustingly back into that soft spot on his mentor's chest.  
  
Tony chanced a glance at Steve, who smiled so sincerely that Tony could almost feel the bones of his team -- his family -- mending around the fractures that had formed, could feel the small, warm weight at his side and the dark, broken man at Steve's filling in the gaps where the damage had seemed irreperable. Bookends that kept the rest of their group tightly in place.  
  
Tony smiled back. He wrapped one arm securely around Peter's back and let his free hand tuck the blanket back around them, carding his fingers through the boy's hair affectionately when his eyelids drifted closed at the gentleness of the touch.  
  
This was not the future Tony had once envisioned. He had always been alone in his extravagence, left to wonder at the hollow feeling in his chest. But once when he had been very, very small, the flesh-and-blood Jarvis had come to him and held him close after a nightmare while his parents were away, rocking him gently as he whispered a prayer into his dark curls:  
  
_"Now I lay me down to sleep,_  
_I pray the Lord my soul to keep,_  
_thy angels watch me through the night,_  
_And keep me safe till morning's light._ "  
  
He wasn't much for religion, himself, but the comfort of another body beside him when it had felt as though he had no one else in the world -- that had lodged itself in his memory with the prayer, and hadn't died out even when everyone around him had.

That feeling had crept up around the hollowness in his chest, seeking to fill. It had forced him out of his cave, set his hands in motion. It had nudged him toward Rhodey and Pepper and the lonely band of misfits now crowding his sofa. It was broken and mismatched, pushing and clinging, shouts of laughter and whispers in the dark, blood spilt for each other and different blood in their veins. That was family.  
  
On the far wall, the stars began to dim as the first purple orange glow of morning began to rise. Tony leaned his cheek against the top of Peter's head.  
  
He closed his eyes.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't intended to add a second chapter to this, but I was so grateful for the response to the last one (and frankly I'm still not over Infinity War.) This has been my first time writing in this fandom, though I've long been a reader. I did my best with the dialogue from Infinity War (I'm legally deaf and you wouldnt believe how hard it is to find a blockbuster movie with captions in theaters) but it's probably off, so bear with me.
> 
> To everyone who left kudos, wrote comments and sent messages - thank you so much. You have no idea how it brightens my day! I hope you enjoyed!


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